Microsoft’s official statement on the matter is: “Microsoft remains committed to making the transition to Windows 7 easier for all customers. With tools, guidance, and the work we’re doing with industry partners it is our belief that this will be an improved process . Furthermore, we expect most customers who upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be doing so through the purchase of a new computer, thereby making the upgrade virtually effortless. That said, Windows XP customers planning to upgrade to Windows 7 will need to perform a clean installation.”

Am in full blown panic mode over this. Windows 7 did something really bad, and now I have lost five years of irreplaceable photographs. I have pulled the drives, and am going to try a data recovery specialist.

We are all guilty at some point of not backing up, that is why I built a new system for Windows 7, and am slowly porting over what I want from the XP SP3 system as needed...the beauty of external hard drives.

Adam, the Data guy said that Windows 7 probably zorched the /mbr or the fat tables to the drives. I was not installing to those drives at all. I have been yelled at by Lupe and her sister for losing those photos.

Murph, if you were not installing to one of those drives, how could it erase the drives? It just doesn't seem logical to me.

Is there no way you can slave the drives to another machine? An external enclosure or something?

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Posted 29 November 2009 - 2004 PM

I'm also doubtful that your drives are hosed. Before going to any specialist, absolutely the first thing to do is give one of the drives to a friend who is fairly computer literate and have him/her try to read the drive on their home system. I wouldn't even think about going to the local BuyMore or calling the Nerd Herd types.

But also as m1a1mg points out, Computer Management is your friend. Its very possible that your drives are fine, its just that W7 chose not to assign letters. If you can see the partitions in the Computer Management console, and see that they are NTFS, healthy, X percent full, etc, then your data and drives are OK. If you can't see anything, fire up Device Manager and see whether W7 sees them under "disk drives".

If your boot sector really did get wiped, what you need accomplished is recovery of your partition table (your partition table resides in the boot sector of your hard disk, i.e. the first 512 bytes on the disk). It sounds like neither TB drive has an OS on it, so you don't need to rewrite the bootloader back into the boot sector, just the partition table.

My tech guy, and two other computer literate buddies (one who built my systems for years) are also at a loss. Tried various things, and no joy, Windows 7 refused to see the drives claiming they are "invalid". A guy in Fort Worth has offered to do the professional level recovery for a couple of hundred. There are over 11,000 photos on these drives, many of which cannot ever be replaced.

Murph, were the drives in the system when you did the new install? If so, there were known problems going from XP to Vista and drive recognition. If you check the Win 7 forums and post your problem, I'd think someone there would be able to help you. They have MS employees that post to those boards. http://www.sevenforums.com/

Yeah they were. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Lupe has been crying over the loss of her photos of her mom, so its critical I get those photos back.

Murph, were the drives in the system when you did the new install? If so, there were known problems going from XP to Vista and drive recognition. If you check the Win 7 forums and post your problem, I'd think someone there would be able to help you. They have MS employees that post to those boards. http://www.sevenforums.com/

I cannot stress enough the value of an external HD system for backups. Won't save your OS or most programs, but for sure those if-I-lose-them-I-die files. Also makes transfer between systems a breeze (unlike the old tape systems of yore). Also, they're cheap these days...<$100 for 250-500 GB systems. Good investment.

Doing the backups are still your responsibility, but it's a "fire and forget" function. Start 'em up and go to bed.

Doing the backups are still your responsibility, but it's a "fire and forget" function. Start 'em up and go to bed.

Uh, check that, for if your system reads a file as having too many characters when it tries to download from a C:\my docs\xxx\xxx\xxx\file name.xxx it will stop and quit transfer, and you will have to check everything to see what folder transferred completely and which one failed to do so.

For the "irreplaceables", periodic backup to hard copy DVD disks is also wise. Everytime you acquire a new bunch of photos, make a photo DVD for yourself and stick it in the files. Periodically make a data DVD for your Word and Excell files. This is in addition to the standalone autobackup hard drive.